My challenge for 2015: try something new every day for a whole year.

Day seven – speechless

I baked a really complicated gateau today. I am pretty proud and will share the photos some other time. But I cannot share them today, I cannot talk about something as meaningless as a cake on a dark day as today, on which twelve people were murdered in a vicious attack on the freedom of the press.

It’s sad to think that today’s terrible terror attack will only fuel the racist hatred in the minds of people all over the world. After all, if a group of people decide to kill in the name of any religious, political or other belief, that does not turn them into representatives of that belief. Many crimes have been committed for many fanatical reasons. All of them are as wrong as each other. We must not paint everyone with the same brush, we must not think in terms of “them” and “us”.

The only differentiation we can make is the one between those people who believe in freedom and peace and those who don’t. We must all stand together to defend our liberal world, in which there is freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religion. Let us mourn the dead of Paris together and then let us make sure that their cruel deaths do not spark even more hatred.

I believe in the values I was brought up with. I believe in human rights, I believe in equality and I believe in civil liberties. I will not have anyone destroy these values, for which our ancestors fought so hard. Not anyone: neither a religious fanatic nor a right-wing populist. I can only hope that you, dear reader, and the majority of people out there are of the same opinion as me, for only then will we be able to leave a better world to our children rather than get sucked into a vicious circle of murder and hatred.